Investigation of 'Glades plane collision a treacherous job

Recovery area is swamp of murky water, snakes, alligators

December 10, 2007|By Leon Fooksman and Scott Travis Staff Writers

Recovery crews plan to fan out in airboats and helicopters this morning to retrieve wreckage scattered across a half-mile swath of Everglades swampland and search for the bodies of two pilots presumed killed in a plane collision Saturday.

Riding with them: Officers armed with shotguns and semi-automatic rifles to fend off alligators and snakes.

"It's not easy and it's not safe. It's very dangerous out there," said Capt. Andrew Bilardello of the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. "There are a lot of aircraft parts that are submerged. The water is black. These guys are going to be working around sharp metal. There's a chance they'll get cut and sliced. There's alligators and snakes. It's going to be quite tedious."

The Piper Twin Comanche and Cessna 152 planes collided in a trapezoid-shaped zone designated on a Federal Aviation Administration map as an "alert area" because it is where several planes might be practicing maneuvers at the same time and pilots are supposed to keep an extra careful eye out for one another. The planes disappeared from an air traffic control radar screen at about 3 p.m.

A half hour later, searchers found the debris field - a broad patch of water and muck littered with mangled aircraft parts - about a mile west of Lox Road along the Palm Beach County-Broward County line.

On Sunday, a National Transportation Safety Board investigator from the Washington, D.C., area arrived and spent the day assessing the damage.

Small chunks of the planes were recovered, but the bulk of the work is set to begin this morning.

Investigator Paul Cox said he will spend several days examining wreckage, taking photographs and gathering air traffic control tapes and maintenance records. It could take a year for the safety board to complete its investigation, he said. Because neither plane had "black box" voice recorders, Cox said, the investigation will focus on three factors: "the men, the machines and the environment."

"We'll look at the pilots. What was their training level? Where were they going?" he said. "We'll look at the condition of the planes and their maintenance records. Then we'll look at the environment. What was air traffic and weather conditions like?"

Investigators did not release the name of either pilot Sunday. According to federal records, the 1964 Piper is registered to Harry Duckworth, 56, of Waverly, Pa. Family members confirmed that Duckworth flew his plane Saturday to visit friends in the Pompano Beach area. He was on a flight plan from Ocala to Pompano Air Park, officials said.

A student pilot was in the second plane, a fixed wing, single engine Cessna 152 registered to Rohan Aviation of Lantana. Saturday, he flew out of the Lantana airport on his way to Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport, said Jeff Rozelle, the company's owner and manager. He said the student was in his mid-20s and from India, but declined to give a name.

Rozelle said that the two pilots may not have seen each other as the Piper descended from above the Cessna because of the wing positions of the two planes.

"It's a textbook problem with the Comanche. It's a low wing aircraft, and he doesn't have total visual reference of everything below it," Rozelle said. "The Cessna is a high wing, and he doesn't have visual reference of a wing descending on top. No one sees each other."

A Miami approach controller had given the Piper directions to the airport. At about 3 p.m. the controller was about to warn the pilot about an approaching plane when both planes disappeared from his screen.

The flight plan for the Cessna is unclear, and the controller in Miami was not in contact with it, officials said.

Six weeks earlier, one of the Lantana company's certified flight instructors crash-landed on a golf course in a country club west of Boynton Beach, killing himself and another pilot and critically injuring a passenger on board. The plane had reported engine trouble moments before it clipped some trees, sailed another 200 feet and then barreled into the green in the large golf community.

The cause of that crash remains under investigation.

In that one, though, there were several witnesses, and the plane remained intact.

The investigation into Saturday's crash faces many more challenges. It is complicated by the raw terrain, the lack of witnesses, and the devastating force of the impact that shredded the two planes into an untold number of pieces.

At the end of Lox Road on Sunday, airboat engines roared as they rushed from a boat ramp toward the crash scene. Two helicopters flew overhead. The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office set up a command unit, where investigators reviewed video of the scene and other evidence.

Recovery workers began removing debris at about 3:30 p.m. and worked until dark fell.

They placed a dozen or so white aircraft pieces, including a couple of wings and what appeared to be a fuselage, next to the boat ramp. The wreckage will be moved later to a facility for further examination.